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11. Tradition. Neither Marx nor Lenin believed past achievements in
philosophy and the arts were made by dead white males. Karl Marx was
himself a dead white male. They had enormous respect for the achieve–
ments of the past, particularly in the arts, and they felt that the legacy of
the past was to be built on.
12. Third World. Marx had litde interest in the backward countries,
and Lenin was concerned with them only as part of his revolutionary strat–
egy. Marx, in particular, was interes ted mainly in the developed countries,
where he thought advanced ideas and radical movements developed.
Where then do these ideas and movements come from?
It
has been
suggested that since the big theme of Marxism-that of revolutionary
socialism-no longer exists, the left has taken unto itself a number of small
themes, many of them minor, trendy, do-goodisms. These do-goodisms
have been put together in a kind of general association of credos that are
not only religiously supported by the Left but are thought of as constitut–
ing the essence of the Left. What the Left did inheri t from Marx and Lenin
is an intolerance of other tendencies, and a belief in its own moral, intel–
lectual and political superiority. I would think that Marx and Lenin and
other radical thinkers would have been baffled, perhaps amused, by the cur–
rent attitudes and beliefs that constitute the Left.
Roger Stevens
was a member of our Advisory Board until shortly
before his death. He was a great supporter and administrator of the arts:
modest, fair-minded, self-effacing, knowledgeable, with good taste and
judgement. Lyndon Johnson appointed him the first chairman of NEA.
He appointed Carolyn Kizer, who is a good poet and objective-minded,
which is even rarer. And he asked me to chair a committee of seven writ–
ers and editors, to be called The Coordinating Council of Literary
magazines (CCLM). We functioned fairly well for a couple of years. But
greedy magazines and the populist tide began to overwhelm us and soon
the giving of grants to magazines became political and corrupt. And I
was kicked upstairs to the role of Chairman Emeritus. It should be
noted, too, that the populist and regional invasion of CCLM, along with
that of the entire NEA, took place under Republican as well as
Democratic administrations because neither of them knew much about
art. By then Roger Stevens had become head of the Kennedy Center. He
was a friend, and we will miss him.
WP
